What Are the Potential Cost Savings from Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide?

Abstract

In the Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill decisions rejecting a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Supreme Court allowed each state to decide whether to legalize the intervention.1 In state legislatures rather than courtrooms, factual claims about the probable extent and implications of permitting physician-assisted suicide assume a preeminent role in the debate about legalization.2 Particularly sensitive in these discussions will be the issue of the potential cost savings from legalizing physician-assisted suicide, and how the savings might influence decision making by health care institutions, physicians, families, and terminally ill patients.3–6 Although we do not agree with . . .